


a razor's edge, cutting deep (right into the heart of things)

by autumnalesque



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Feelings, Listen I just love them a lot ok, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Psychological Trauma, let them be happy, let them support each other through their traumas, this might become a series idk yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-02 21:24:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20252410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnalesque/pseuds/autumnalesque
Summary: “I can’t let you die alone,” he says, his breath softly ghosting against the scar on Dimitri’s right shoulder. “That’s all.”(Or, after the reclamation of Fhirdiad, Felix and Dimitri try to navigate where they stand with each other after everything that's happened.)





	a razor's edge, cutting deep (right into the heart of things)

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I finished the Blue Lions route first, and all these kids stole my goddamn heart, but Felix and Dimitri ESPECIALLY killed me dead. So I word vomited some feelings about them, and this happened. IDEK.
> 
> I like me some boys with history, especially when that history is full of angst and sadness. What can I say. 
> 
> This is unbeta'd so any mistakes are. Welp. They happen.
> 
> Enjoy!

“I hate you.”

“I know. If it’s any consolation, I hate myself too.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You’re going to get every last one of us killed.”

“And yet you follow me anyway, do you not?”

“...”

“Felix, I…”

“I can’t let you die alone,” he says, his breath softly ghosting against the scar on Dimitri’s right shoulder. “That’s all.”

Dimitri shuts his eyes, runs his fingers through Felix's hair, the length different than he remembers it from the before time, when things were easier.

"I am not what you wished to find, when you were looking for me these past five years. For that, I am sorry. But know that I don't intend to sacrifice my life, nor do I wish for anyone else to do so. I would not ask that of you." He murmurs, softly.

"Shut _up_, you absolute idiot," Felix huffs, biting sharply at the pale skin of Dimitri's shoulder. That gets a startled gasp from him, and Felix takes the opportunity to lean up, his long hair brushing against Dimitri's cheek in the moonlight.

Before Dimitri can protest, Felix draws the breath from his lungs in a hungry, desperate kiss. Whether the desperation is from passion or from the desire to shut Dimitri up before he says anything else Felix deems worthless, Dimitri cannot say. It hardly matters, because it has been five long, maddeningly lonely years since Dimitri has felt the warmth a kiss can bring, and he leans up into it with a matching desperation, chasing the feeling of anything that isn't the despair he's let swallow him whole.

This is war. There are always deaths, in war; Dimitri knows this intimately. Before recently, he would have used his friends like pawns on a chessboard, letting them fall one after another as long as it got him to his goal in the end.

Now, he is king. He is home, amongst his people whom, despite all odds, still love and support him as though he'd never left. As though he weren't a monster in a man's skin.

He is king, and Felix is here, in his bed, kissing him like it's the last wish of a dying man. Like these last five years had never happened, and he's stolen Dimitri off into the woods near the monastery for one of their angst-fueled midnight rendezvous.

Back then, Felix had looked at him as though he were a stranger, as though he were trying to find the real Dimitri lost somewhere inside an imposter wearing his skin. Now there was none of that, their sins and their feelings laid bare, and it feels something like being born anew, as though they're facing each other honestly for the first time.

His fingers trace the notches of Felix's spine, and he feels the way Felix shivers against him, feels the way his body goes taut, as if he can't decide whether to stay here or flee into the night like a wild thing. They have grown, but their bodies still fit together the same-- a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

Felix does not flee. Dimitri has always been the one who runs away, but even he cannot run anymore. Felix pulls back, presses his hands against Dimitri's bare chest, fingers splayed out against pale, scarred skin. Dimitri looks to them, then lets his attention travel slowly upward, until he meets the steely gaze of his partner.

For all he claims to hate Dimitri, there is no hatred in his eyes now. Relief, as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, shines there instead. Neither of them speak, simply watching each other in silence, the only sound the soft catching of breath between them. They do not need words, Dimitri realizes, and he wants to laugh at the thought of it.

They never have, but he's always tried to force them into the space between Felix and himself, a wall he unconsciously built to push his humanity away. He brings a hand up, lets his fingers brush the side of Felix's face, along his cheek.

Felix pulls back from it, visibly flinching from the touch. "Don't," he says, firmly, "touch me like I'm some fragile thing. I'm not something you can break, _Dimitri_."

His name falling from those lips gives Dimitri a start. It feels as though it's been a lifetime since Felix called him by name, with no insult attached. He arches an eyebrow.

"So I'm not the boar prince anymore, then?" He asks, unable to keep the teasing out of his voice. Felix scoffs.

"You're a boar king named Dimitri, that's all. Don't get too ahead of yourself."

Dimitri only laughs, his hands finding their place on Felix's hips to hold him there, like anchors in a storm. He rolls his hips up, slow and deliberate now that he's got Felix where he wants him.

Felix's fingertips dig into his chest, his eyelids fluttering despite the way he see Felix fighting it. He growls, diving downward to smash their mouths together again. This, Dimitri thinks, as his lips part to let Felix in, is more like how things were before. Felix, taking whatever he wanted, and Dimitri letting him because feeling anything else was better than the all-consuming rage he lived with every day.

This kiss is all frustration and anger, and Dimitri unravels just as he always does. His perception of the world around them shrinks, falls away until the only focal point in his world is Felix, hands pressing him firmly down into the mattress, a match to his own strength.

This is where the paths diverge, where things are different, now. The rage that has fueled all his actions for the past nine years is quelled, now; an afterthought, like waking from a nightmare. Felix can sense it, too-- it's evident in the deliberate way he holds himself, in the way he holds back, just a little, where he wouldn't have before.

This time, when the kiss breaks and he rests his forehead against Dimitri's to catch his breath, Dimitri looks up into those dark eyes clouded with lust and sees Felix for what feels like the first time in a decade.

Love and hate. Fear and anger. Hope and a deep, soul-rending sadness that Dimitri feels, too, like a knife twisted, permanently, in his chest. Like a ghost that will always haunt him, chilling him cold to the bone.

They linger like this, on the precipice of something, for quite a long moment; balanced on a knife's edge, neither of them tipping the scales in one direction or the other.

And then something shifts, minutely, and Felix is pulling away from him, swinging his legs off the side of the bed, next to Dimitri, his gaze downcast. Dimitri doesn't speak, only reaches, lets his hand rest lightly over Felix's, a question in itself.

Felix sighs, curses under his breath. "I can't. Not now. I can't…" his voice is strained, like he's forcing himself to get the words out. "I can't lose anyone else. After the war is over, if… if we survive. But I can't. You understand?"

His hand tightens over Felix's, and Felix does not pull away from it._ Of course_, Dimitri wants to say. _Of course I understand. We have both of us lost too much, old friend._

"We'll avenge them, Felix. Every last one of them. With you at my side, there's no way we'll lose." He says, instead. He sees the corner of Felix's mouth twitch, minutely.

"Of course we will." He says, in a cryptic way that makes Dimitri wonder at which part of his words Felix is responding to. Dimitri does not reply-- only watches, silently, as Felix gathers his clothes, makes himself presentable, and disappears back to his own quarters, leaving Dimitri alone with his thoughts.

For once, they do not drift to the past, to the faces of the ones he's loved and lost.

This time, his thoughts look forward, into the future. To peace, to celebration. To being a king his father would be proud of.

And always, always, with Felix, his oldest friend and confidant at his side.


End file.
